Network devices, such as stackable Ethernet switches and/or routers, receive data on physical media, such as optical fiber, analyze the data to determine its destination, and output the data on physical media in accordance with the destination. Typically, such network devices include multiple switching silicon devices that properly route data received on an input port to an output destination port. These switching silicon devices include network ports that receive network traffic to be forwarded to an output port of the network device, and may include stacking ports that receive bypass traffic to be forwarded to another switching mechanism of the network device. Typically, the switching silicon devices include dedicated stacking ports that are designed the same as the network ports in order to provide flexibility in configurability and/or use of these in the network device. However, such an arrangement overwhelms the switching buffers and/or the queuing sub-system of the silicon device, thereby leading to incorrect quality of service (QoS) metrics being applied on the network traffic. For example, the ports of the switching silicon device may be overwhelmed by the network traffic ingress into the switching mechanism and/or by the bypass traffic entering the stacking port from other switching silicon devices of the network device. This may further deny proper quality of service (QoS) to the network traffic and/or the bypass traffic.